the Boys Make a New Fort

The boys climbed under these shrubs and found some space to sit, but not quite enough. Always resourceful, they used my gardening shears and snipped the branches that were in their way, but left them. A week or so later I noticed that some of the branches were turning yellow and brown. This is what the "fort" looks like now that I made them haul the dead branches to the woods.

Notice, too, the top is a bit crunched. That is because before these shrubs were used as an underground fort, they were used as a landing pad when climbing off the porch down the drainpipe.

People who don't have a lot of children often do not understand the sometimes chaos of my days. Besides the usual mischievousness of the children, there are the times of sickness en masse that bring an otherwise orderly household to a screeching halt. Currently, four of six children have diarrhea, and I'm tired from comforting my Moaning Myrtle (Grace) all during the night when she would cry out.

I am fond of quoting the beginning of Proverbs 14:4 "Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean," but it wasn't until recently that I began quoting the end of it, too: "but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox." During times like this past month, when we take turns feeling horrible and being irritable because of sickness and sin, I have only my faith in God's Word that although there are sacrifices (like a clean manger), much is to be gained by my growing herd of oxen.